


Termites

by MissBrainProblems



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-07 18:13:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21462376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissBrainProblems/pseuds/MissBrainProblems
Summary: Weaver and Golem look for solace in one another other, and manage to find at least a little of what they seek.
Relationships: Taylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver/Theo Anders | Golem
Kudos: 7





	Termites

He wasn't Brian, but maybe that was okay. Having a thousand miles of distance between her and her ex-boyfriend - if her and Brian could have ever really called themselves an actual couple, of course - had given Taylor the time and ability to realize that there had never been and likely would never been anything meaningful between the two of them; as she looked down at Theo, sleeping peacefully next to her under the covers, Taylor considered the fact that there wasn't really anything meaningful between her and the other boy, either. Even so, Theo was... Adequate; he was adequately attractive since he had lost his pudge, was adequately good in bed, and was an adequately supportive partner. At the same time, Taylor supposed that she herself was only an adequate partner in all of those respects, as well; that being considered, it seemed that everything mostly balanced out between her and Theo. Both of them, of course, were far more than content with simply being "adequate" for one another; considering that the only other real option for either of them was to have nothing and nobody at all, to be alone and all by themselves hours away from their hometown, away from their families and their friends, neither teenagers would allow themselves to be dissatisfied by "adequate".

Theo stirred slightly, letting out a small grumble as he began to wake from the deep sleep he had been in when Taylor herself had awoken half an hour ago. Looking over at her bedside clock, Taylor smiled a little bit as she saw the time that the digital numbers read off: Six-thirty in the morning, half an hour before their daily run. When Theo had first decided to accompany Taylor on her jogs, it had taken most of the energy that she would have intended to use for the run in just getting the boy out of bed on time; as the months and then years had gone on, though, Theo slowly reached the point where he was waking up entirely on his own at the appointed time, sometimes even being up before Taylor herself was. It was a small thing, but the girl was happy to know that she had managed to have even such a minor impact on her boyfriend's life.

Her boyfriend... Could she really have called Theo her boyfriend any more than she had been able to ever have called Brian the same? Sure, her and Theo had been... "Involved" with each other far longer than she had been with Brian, but was there really anything of substance to it? They were physically intimate, yeah, and they slept together, sure, but friends with benefits did the same sort of things, too. It wasn't as if they didn't spend time together outside of the bedroom, but much of that time was spent running, in training sessions, helping each other with their physical conditioning, or on patrol out in Chicago; the two of them had tried going on formal "dates" a few times, out to movies, dinners, or other events, but both Taylor and Theo could tell that neither of them were really getting much out of it.

At most... At most, Taylor could say that the most emotionally connected the two of them ever were to each other was when one needed to use the other as a dumping ground for their respective burdens; more than the sex, more than the team work, the emotional support Taylor and Theo offered each other was, perhaps, the most meaningful part of their relationship. Of course, it wasn't a healthy relationship, and Taylor knew that well enough. It certainly wasn't healthy for her to sob into Theo's arms as she cried about how much she missed her dad and the Undersiders, how she wished that she had never developed her stupid powers, how she wished that Emma and her were still friends; nor was it healthy at all for Theo to stare blankly off into the distance as he recounted for the twentieth time his encounter with Jack Slash, told Taylor for the fiftieth time how scared, how frightened, how absolutely terrified he was standing up to one of the most infamous villains in the world, told his girlfriend for the hundredth time how much he worried about Aster, even worried about Kayden somewhat, and even Justin, just a tiny bit. What was the term Doctor Yamada had used when Taylor had talked about her relationship with Theo during their therapy sessions? Co-dependent. It wasn't quite that, Doctor Yamada had said, it didn't quite fill all of the necessary criteria, but Taylor and Theo's relationship certainly had a strong taste of it.

"Mrm... Taylor?" Theo had woken fully, and his hand went to his girlfriend's bare leg, caressing it in an affectionate but chaste manner; even when it looked like his touch might go far enough up Taylor's leg to turn into an erotic motion, Theo always withdrew it before anything significant ever happened. Her boyfriend had an adequate libido, Taylor knew, but she was also well aware that he had never and likely would never make the first move on her, under any circumstances; it wasn't as if Theo wasn't attracted to her, wasn't aroused as any young man would be at the sight of his girlfriend in the nude, but as in all other aspects of his life, Theo just seemed to lack the necessary... Force, perhaps, to cross the threshold. As disappointing as it might have been sometimes, Taylor was also... Fine with it, she supposed; it meant that she never had to go through the awkward hassle of rejecting him when she wasn't in the mood, which would have been a pain for her to deal with.

"Morning, Theo." The two of them had, at some point, managed to establish something resembling a routine, some sort of morning ritual, a way that the both of them did things every time they woke up next to each other that managed to provide them with some small, adequate sense of stability in their otherwise turbulent lives. The way that Theo had softly stroked at Taylor's leg had been one part of their ritual, and the girl's meager, quiet greeting had been the next step. "Ready for our run?" The third step, a question that Taylor already knew the answer to, which would be followed by the fourth step...

"Ready as always." The response that was always offered, as Theo offered a mild, adequate smile up at Taylor. With a yawn - a motion that he somehow managed to repeat without fail in addition to everything else - her boyfriend climbed out of bed, still in the nude; adequately attractive, with some muscle packed onto his body from all of the training he had been through, though not nearly as much as Brian had sported; even in comparison to her last boyfriend, though, Theo was still well enough to stir Taylor up when she saw him like that. Idly, she considered maybe breaking up their daily routine by indulging in her desires once they were back from the run, while they were both still full of exercise-spurred adrenaline; maybe she would, though, and only maybe, since Taylor knew that her passions tended to go as quickly as they came those days.

"Alright, sounds good." Theo had told Taylor about Night and Fog a few times, about how the two of them had been brainwashed and psychologically broken by the Gesellschaft, and how the husband and wife possessed only the remotest simulacrum of what married life was supposed to be, going through the same exact motions day in and day out, to the point that Theo had been able to memorize the exact things they would say, the exact steps they would take, and the exact facial expressions they would show; the unspoken anxiety that hung between them whenever he talked about Geoff and Dorothy, though, was the rather unsubtle implication that, perhaps, Taylor and Theo were engaged in an albeit slightly more healthy version of the "play" that the two Empire capes had put on.

Just as Taylor had leered at Theo when he pulled himself out from under the covers, so did her boyfriend look at her in the same manner when she in turn extricated herself from the blankets. Yes, Theo was possessed of an adequate libido, but that perhaps made it only more frustrating that he was never the first to act; of course, she enjoyed not ever needing to turn down Theo if she didn't feel like sex, but God _damnit_, why didn't he ever show her how much he _wanted_ her? Even if the sum total of Theo's desire for her amounted to nothing more than a small, meager impulse, didn't he know how wonderful it would make her feel to know that her boyfriend was turned on enough by her to make a God damned move on her?! What was she supposed to think when he just stood there, looking at her, not bothering to actually let her know he _felt_ about her, even if it wasn't much?

As much as Taylor didn't want to admit it, though, she knew what the answers to those questions were; just as in her relationship with Brian, the sex she had with Theo wasn't important. In most relationships, that would have been a fine statement to have made, and it would have implied that there were things that the partners valued more than just carnal knowledge. In the relationships that Taylor had been in with Brian and Theo, though, it meant just that: Nobody placed any importance on the sex, and there was nothing of importance in the sex, either. Theo provided her, of course, with adequate enough love-making, but adequate didn't mean that there was any real passion in the acts they performed on one another, and it didn't mean that there was any emotion in what they did, and it _certainly_ didn't imply that there was any _meaning_ in the sex they had; at best, it was two people releasing their physical urges on one another when they felt the need to, and at worst, it was two people using each other as a distraction from their traumas and their anxieties. Taylor considered, idly, whether or not she even possessed the necessary capabilities to have anything resembling a healthy romantic relationship with a boy.

The two of them pulled on their running clothes in near complete silence, the reticence broken up only by a few monosyllabic words here and there from either of them. What was there even for the couple to talk about or to say, in order to fill that silence? More discussions about their pasts in Brockton Bay, more venting of neuroses? Maybe they could go over the last fight with the Folk for the tenth time, even though they had covered all possible bases? Hell, maybe they could just talk about the God damned weather? Taylor wondered what normal couples talked about, or if any silences that other partners found themselves in were as awkward as the one that Theo and his girlfriend trudged through like it had physical presence.

With an idle smile from both of them, they made their way out of Taylor's room; Everett, apparently, had already been up and about, the ever-vigilant team leader looking like he had just come back from a solo training session. A few words of greeting were exchanged between the three of them as Everett passed by the couple in the hallway, but nothing of significance; even with the other Wards that were just her friends, Taylor couldn't quite find it in her to really converse with them, to really connect with them, to really be an _actual_ friend to them, instead of just a girl that called herself their friend. Ava, Wanton, Katherine, Olive, Everett himself, and poor, poor Kirk, long gone from them by that point; all had genuinely tried to be Taylor's friend with all of their hearts, and but God had she tried to be theirs, but God she had.

No matter what, though, the faces of Lisa, Rachel, Alec, Aisha, and even Sabah and Lily remained in the forefront of Taylor's mind; no matter what, no matter how many months or years had passed since she had left Brockton Bay, she just couldn't get the Undersiders out of her head. What was even wrong with her? She had spent several times over the amount of months that she had spent with the Undersiders instead with the Chicago wards, so why, why, why why _why_ couldn't she just leave Brockton Bay behind? Why couldn't she just put the Undersiders behind, in the past, where they belonged, and move on with her life? She doubted that any of them even wanted to see her, not after she had cut ties with and abandoned them like that; not Brian, not Lisa, not Aisha, not Alec, and _certainly _not Rachel, not after having betrayed all of them _twice_ by that point. There was no point to it, she just needed to get on with things, she just needed to stop obsessing over them, and she just needed to...

Taylor's thoughts were only disrupted by the feeling of the cold Chicago air blowing past her as she and Theo exited the PRT building out onto the streets; no matter the season, it seemed, Chicago was perpetually chilly at seven o'clock in the morning. The two of them had worn warm enough clothes to protect them from the worst of the cold, but the heat their bodies would generate once they began their jog would manage to work through the rest of the chill. With a small, adequate smile, though, Theo turned to Taylor, and offered his girlfriend a docilely intoned non-question. "Ready, Taylor?"

With an equally paltry expression, Taylor nodded, and offered a passive, near-silent non-answer. "Yeah, let's go." And with that, Taylor Hebert and Theo Anders began to run; then, after a while, they ran some more. Then, after another while, the two of them continued to run, and ran even further than before; then they ran, and then they ran, and then they ran, until they just couldn't run any more. And yet, even so, Taylor and Theo _still_ continued to run, ran for as long and as far as they could manage, and then simply continued running, even though there was no end in sight; then they kept running, and kept running, and kept running, until their legs and their bodies and their hearts all gave out on them. And then? Of course, they just kept running.


End file.
